MINISTRY

'A thought occurs to me: do I possess a stamina for going unnoticed? Can I handle being overlooked? Do I have a spirituality that equips me to an unknown thing for his glory?'  

Zack Eswine, Sensing Jesus, p.245. 

MINISTERIAL VIRILITY SYMBOLS

'Some men compare penis size, other men compare church size - there is little difference between these games. Both are false measures and are of the same genre of self-misdirection.' 

Zack Eswine, Sensing Jesus, p.215. 

CHRISTIANITY

'Christianity offers another life; but it also sanctifies the present one.' 

Roger Scruton, Our Church: A Personal History of the Church of England, p.93.  

CHRISTIANITY

'The full, horrifying, exhilarating truth is that if you actually look at the tenets of Christianity they tell you that good behaviour is only the baseline, the launching pad, the sine qua non. The point at which Christianity takes off and begins to glow is when it does become counter-intuitive and downright troublesome in worldly terms. There are some very disturbing, subversive instructions there: 'Sell all thou hast and give to the poor...turn the other cheek...judge not, that ye shall not be judged...blessed are the meek...lay not treasures on earth...consider the lilies of the field....' 

These are not sensible injunctions, fit for a Lord Chesterfield letter or a newspaper leader column. They sit uneasily in a society convinced that decent people are those who own property and are constantly busy, getting and spending. They sound odd in a time when every group bristles with awareness of its "rights" and is determined to stand on the and sue for compensation at the slightest, even accidental, tap to its cheek. 

They sit uneasily too, with the tough landlording policies over the years of the Church Commissioners in England, with the arrogant obduracy of feuding clerics in the great cathedrals, with the wealth of the Vatican, with the argument against priestly celibacy which focuses on the "natural right" to a married life, with the snobberies and snarlings of different layers of Catholic and Anglo-Catholic spokesmen, and with the fact that more and more clergymen are joining trade unions and speaking with a blush of their "security" and "career structures."'

Libby Purves, Holy Smoke, p.186. 

FEELINGS

'If one thing unties crystal-gazers, huckster TV evangelists and High Church heritage-aesthetes, it is the elevation of religious feeling above dull plodding religious duty. If you bristle with mistrust at the self-indulgence of Glastonbury wire-twisters, you should extend that mistrust to emotional revival meetings where you are urged to"Let Jesus be your friend" and to "bear witness' to Jesus on stage - but never told that when the meeting is over you should go home and be nicer to your family, not to mention your enemies at the office.' 

Libby Purves, Holy Smoke: Religion and Roots: A Personal Memoir, p.183. 

MINISTRY TRAINING

'Jesus taught his disciples sound doctrine. Yet throughout the Gospels we consistently observe Jesus teaching theology in the midst of the pysch ward. He took his disciples into the hospital, as it were, sat them down in the emergency room; and confronted them with the ghastly sights, grieved sounds, and rank aromas of actual human people in their diseases, their wrestling with demons, their disputes, their poverty, and their loss of spouses. He brought them near to ethnic prejudices, injustices, anxieties, and traumas, not to mention the joys, pleasures, delights, and longings of ordinary human beings. Disciples learned about God in the context of the bodily life situations that actually exist in the world, the sensory ramifications of an under-the-sun reality.'  

Zack Eswine, Sensing Jesus, p.180. 

DECISIONS

'Remembering how we feel when others detonate our lives with their decision making will help us remember those who are in our way and at our whim when the decisions are ours to make.' 

Zack Eswine, Sensing Jesus, p.145. 

KNOWLEDGE

'"Partial knowledge" is the name of the street on which each of us must have an address and build our lives. Our hope is not what we know but what Jesus knows.' 

Zack Eswine, Sensing Jesus, p.143. 

DEPENDENCE

'I've carried the subtle idea around with me that growing in knowledge will mean that I get to depend less and control more. But Jesus indicates the opposite, and this challenges the way we do theology and Bible study. To know God truly, we have to know that we are not him. In a word, Jesus teaches us that humility is the dominant quality of becoming like a child in order to see the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 18:3-4).'

Zack Eswine, Sensing Jesus, p.136. 

MIRACLES

'Lazarus raised was a sign that Jesus was the resurrection and the life. The blind man given sight was the sign that Jesus is the light of the world. The people fed was a sign that Jesus is the bread of life. As a result, every dying person, every blind person, and every hungry person has been shown that something more powerful than death, disease, and hunger exists.'

Zack Eswine, Sensing Jesus, p.114.